National Political News

WASHINGTON – Abortion opponents in the Senate are seeking tough restrictions in the health care overhaul bill, a move that could roil a shaky Democratic effort to pass President Barack Obama's signature issue by year's end.

Leslie Lohse, leader of a small band of Indians in Tehama County, recently found herself speaking directly to President Barack Obama – one chief of state to another.

WASHINGTON – As bad as Friday's jobs report was, showing October's unemployment rate jumping sharply to 10.2 percent, the outlook is likely to worsen for American workers well into next year.

WASHINGTON – The killings of 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas – allegedly by an Army psychiatrist who also was a Muslim – set off a rancorous debate Friday that once again spotlighted the fear among Muslims in America that they would be collectively found guilty for the actions of one man.

WASHINGTON – Hiring a federal judge all but takes an act of Congress, but Congress hasn't been acting much lately.

IRVINE – Goldman Sachs was one of the last Wall Street giants to enter the subprime lending world, but when it did, it quickly climbed into bed with profligate, highflying firms – companies such as New Century Financial Corp.

When California wildfires ruined their jewelry business, Tony Becker and his wife fell months behind on their mortgage payments and experienced firsthand the perils of subprime mortgages.

In 2006 and 2007, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. peddled more than $40 billion in securities backed by at least 200,000 risky home mortgages but never told the buyers that it was secretly betting that a sharp drop in U.S. housing prices would send the value of those securities plummeting.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – After three days of encounters with U.S.-bashing Pakistanis – who rejected her contention the United States and Pakistan face a common enemy – Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Friday "we're not getting through."

WASHINGTON – The $787 billion stimulus bill approved by Congress earlier this year has saved or created more than 640,000 jobs, including more than 110,000 in California, the White House said Friday.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Thursday pressed her one-woman blitz on Pakistani public opinion, bluntly challenging the country to defend its territory from an onslaught by religious extremists and asking why Pakistan's powerful military was unable to find Saudi-born terrorist Osama bin Laden.

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama on Wednesday signed the first major piece of federal gay rights legislation, a milestone that activists compared to the passage of 1960s civil rights legislation empowering blacks.

Moderate Democratic senators remained reluctant Tuesday – and in one case, defiant – about backing the government-run public option health care plan that party leaders are offering as a compromise, making it highly uncertain whether the plan can become law.

The federal government's preparedness for the H1N1 – or swine flu– pandemic, which has claimed more than 1,000 lives nationwide, was inadequate and incomplete, a congressional subcommittee said Tuesday.

The Sacramento Municipal Utility District on Tuesday scored $127.5 million in federal stimulus funds to install "smart meters" in every home and business in its territory – the first step in giving local consumers real-time, online information about their energy use.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Tuesday called on Congress to pass a health care overhaul that would require all Americans to carry insurance, but he warned that California will get stuck with a bill of more than $1 billion a year for expanding Medicaid if the federal government doesn't provide more money to the states.

A year ago, Robin and Robb Wirthlin went to Riverside Wesleyan Church in Sacramento to warn Californians what they feared might happen if gay marriage remained legal in the state.

WASHINGTON – Iran hedged Friday on accepting a deal that would transfer most of its low-enriched uranium out of the country to be converted for peaceful uses, saying it wants more time to study the deal and suggesting that it prefers a different approach.

WASHINGTON - Consumer advocates cheered and the financial sector jeered Thursday as a controversial plan to create a federal agency to regulate mortgages, credit cards and other forms of consumer credit cleared a key House committee on its way to an uncertain future.

A key House of Representatives committee is set to vote next week on legislation that would overhaul financial regulation and produce greater transparency for investors, but as it's now written, it fails to address many of the credit-rating agency missteps that helped fuel the global financial crisis.

As the housing market collapsed in late 2007, Moody's Investors Service, whose investment ratings were widely trusted, responded by purging analysts and executives who warned of trouble and promoting those who helped Wall Street plunge the country into its worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

WASHINGTON – Californians have an overwhelmingly negative view of Congress, with two of every three voters disapproving of its performance, according to the latest Field Poll.

NEW ORLEANS – On his first presidential visit to this still-struggling city that was ravaged four years ago by Hurricane Katrina, President Barack Obama promised residents Thursday, "We will not forget about New Orleans."

WASHINGTON – Democrat Ami Bera, a physician from Elk Grove, is leading the money chase in his bid to unseat Republican Rep. Dan Lungren of Gold River next year, according to the latest fundraising reports.

WASHINGTON – The U.S. military can send only about 32,000 more combat troops to Afghanistan in the next three months without straining the Army and Marine Corps, military and administration officials told McClatchy.